Review: The Silver Pigs

Lindsey Davis, The Silver Pigs, (‎Cornerstone Digital, 2011)

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4539899637

Fabulous funny ancient Rome whodunnit

I discovered this author after reading Murder in Purple and Gold. What have I been missing?

This ancient Rome whodunnit series features detective Marcus Didius Falco, the future father of Fulvia Albia, the detective in the book I read. It shares with the other book a deliciously intimate feel for life in ancient Rome and vivid, interesting characters.

It also features an adorable sense of humour. Our protagonist, for example, when opining upon the attractions of naked women, quips, ‘in my line of work, they are usually dead’. He says, ‘Vespasian’s banquets were extremely old-fashioned; the waitresses kept their clothes on and he never poisoned the food.’ Erudite and funny puns: ‘swarming like honeybees in Hybla’.

On the steps of the Temple of Saturn, Didius Falco rescues a girl fleeing from thugs. Sosia Camillina had been kidnapped from a senator’s house. Her uncle has left her a bank box, to which only she has the code. Inside, a silver pig, a heavy lead ingot, on which the government claims a monopoly, from – Britain. Someone’s been stealing the emperor’s silver.

Solving the case means tracing the chain of evidence back to source, taking him to Britain, the cold, wet place he remembers, where ‘you could travel for days… before you found an altar to any god whose name you recognised’.

Davis knows how to write to create impact, so the ‘reveals’ of major clues in the case hit home. Falco’s account of his time working undercover in the lead mine is harrowing. His relationship with his client, Sosia’s cousin Helena Justina, is intricate.